


What's puzzling you is the nature of my game

by heavenisalibrary



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, because obviously, bit of dark!Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:29:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Usually Clara only travels with him on Wednesdays, but he can’t can’t <i>can’t</i> possibly be alone that long, can’t pause for a moment in the console room full of Gallifreyan, each character heavy with a story from his life, weighed further down by the knowledge that no one else could read them any more. In a way it was fitting — he didn’t like to speak about himself to others, or about past friends and loved ones. And here he had a physical manifestation: his whole life printed around a room many others would walk through, and never know what any of it meant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Name of the Doctor, River's been gone and the Doctor's been a bit lost. I guess it's pretty full-on dark!Doctor but it's not explicitly covered, sort of comes in on the tail end. Will be two parts.

The Doctor has never been one for grieving; he likes to have a moment, maybe shed a tear, and then spin around the console until he ends up somewhere new. It’s getting harder lately, in the way that a roof might give underway of a continuous leak, and after he loses the Ponds he needs to avoid drowning altogether. Clara pulls him out of it, though, and in that way it’s no different than the other times: he has his moment, sheds some tears, and finds something new to occupy his time and his thoughts until whatever he’s lost has become a dull ache in the back of his head, a two-second thought that occurs to him from time to time and makes his whole chest ache until he refocuses. 

Grieving for River isn’t anything like that at all.

After Trenzalore, his grief is vast — it spans the universe, yawning behind him, a great cavernous nothing that follows after him, tracing his path from planet to planet, moment to moment. He doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t stop moving, because to rest would be unbearable. He doesn’t have the time or the will to find a new mystery, and so when the smoke clears he pulls Clara along with him. Usually she only travels with him on Wednesdays, but he can’t can’t can’t possibly be alone that long, can’t pause for a moment in the console room full of Gallifreyan, each character heavy with a story from his life, weighed further down by the knowledge that no one else could read them any more. In a way it was fitting — he didn’t like to speak about himself to others, or about past friends and loved ones. And here he had a physical manifestation: his whole life printed around a room many others would walk through, and never know what any of it meant.

He goes to take Clara with him every other day now, and skips the days in between — occasionally she’ll refuse and he’ll go looking for trouble. Those are his worst days, he thinks, the days when he swoops down on a planet where he can feel the tension in the air, shifting and crackling, and ignites it intentionally so he can be part of the fight. Those are the days her words echo in his ears — Doctor, healer, wise man, what might that come to mean? — more than most, the days when he feels his sorrow kindle into anger in his chest, when he lashes out. Every time he does it he returns to the TARDIS with the taste of ash in his mouth, sick to his stomach, and when he closes his eyes he sees River in her early days, when she was still more Melody than not — lost and confused and angry and violent and capable of so, so much but unsure of what to do with it. Those nights he doesn’t sleep even if he wants to, because he knows his nightmares will have her face, and he’ll wake up screaming and longing for her benediction. He’s forgiven her everything, always, and she him. Now that she’s gone, there’s no one left to forgive him at all, because no one quite knows how deep his fault lines run.

The Doctor takes Clara to balls and to museums, takes her to ruins before and after, takes her to Disney Land on the moon, teaches her how to fly a Viper Mark VII — he runs faster than he’s maybe ever run, and Clara gets tired. Sometimes she asks him if he’s alright, when he lets his shoulders slump because he thinks she isn’t looking, and sometimes she mentions River explicitly, because of course she notices, but he can’t ever find the words. Sometimes he takes Clara to archaeological digs and important finds, and she looks at him with such pity that he wants to crawl out of his skin because he’s looking for River, though he’d never admit it. He knows their timelines aren’t just back to front but inside out and upside down, so he thinks it’s not unlikely that he’ll see her again, but with every passing day the hope grows dimmer and dimmer. He stops hiding the fact that he’s looking for her, after a while. He takes Clara to universities and to lectures, stops by at abandoned planets and mysterious ruins, and sometimes he finds out that he’s just missed Professor Song. He takes Clara to see warrior queens from all planets and times, hoping that just once he’ll find his wife in a costume, because it’s a particular past-time of hers, but still nothing.

Clara is understanding at first, and then she starts to look anxious, and then she won’t travel with him at all.

“So much to see, Clara Oswald,” he says, placing his hands on either side of her face and giving her his broadest grin. “How can you stay behind?”

“Not forever, Doctor,” she says with a smile, reaching up to cover his hand with hers. “Just until you’re better. Just until you’re alright.”

“What do you mean ‘alright’? I’m always alright, totally okay, that’s me — the King of Okay,” he sing-songs back at her, but she just smiles, prying his hands from her face and placing a quick kiss to his knuckles.

“You’re not,” Clara says, and when he starts to interrupt she keeps on: “and that’s okay. It’s alright not to be alright. But you can’t see yourself and it’s — I saw a documentary once about a pair of lions a zoo had, and they’d gotten them both as cubs, and they lived together their whole lives, had dozens of little lion cubs. Lions mate for life, did you know that? Anyway, the girl lion died, and her mate went a bit mad without her. Started getting all snappy with the people who’d raised him, pacing the cage — it was terribly sad.”

“I’m not a lion, Clara.”

“No, but that’s what you look like,” she says, “kind of trapped and toothy and mad. A bit lost in a box you’ve been in for ages.”

He straightens his bowtie and tries not to let the words sink into his bones and make them any heavier than they already feel. “Next Wednesday, then?”

“We’ll see,” she says, giving him a silly little salute. “On your way, soldier. Take care of yourself.”

“Yes, well,” he says, feeling that familiar sense of dread creep in every time he says goodbye — it’s not necessarily that he doesn’t think Clara will come with him again, but whether or not he’ll be able to come back, well. That’s another story entirely. Still, he stands a bit straighter, and reminds himself that he will be back in a week. He will. “As you were.”

He spins back into the TARDIS and slumps against the console, trying to decide where to go, for certainly he can’t stay put. He’s sure that if he doesn’t immediately find a distraction he’ll simply lay down somewhere in the many corridors of the TARDIS and never get up, he’ll grow into his ship as his ship grows into the earth, and for a fleeting second he thinks it might be better that way — but as usual, it’s River’s words in his ears, River’s face behind his eyes as he wipes a hand over his face: a million, million voices saying yes, couldn’t let you die without knowing you are loved, by so many, and so much, and by no one more than —

The Doctor flips levers and presses buttons, sending the TARDIS whirling into the vortex with a bit of a groan, and when he steps outside he’s only half sure where he’ll find himself.

The planet that sprawls before him seems suited to his mood. It’s vast and flat, red dirt and jagged upshots somewhere in the distance against a grey sky. He can see the red sun rising on the horizon, and feel the blistering heat biting at the skin of his face. The air is thick but dry, falling into his lungs and rattling around uncomfortably until he adjusts a bit. He steps back into the TARDIS and sheds his jacket, and after a moment of hesitation, the bowtie as well. He steps back out to the harsh landscape with his sleeves rolled up, and begins the long trek to the central city. He knows that he could land the TARDIS closer, but somehow crossing a desert seems apt; he thinks that by the time he hits the city he’ll feel as raw on the outside as he does on the inside, and more stinging than this thought is the one immediately following: River would roll her eyes at his melodrama.

 

The city he finally reaches is in tatters. War-torn, buildings razed to rubble, not a tree or child in sight. He can hear and feel the rumblings of gunfire somewhere in the distance, and although it all makes him a bit sick, it’s also a bit of a balm — it’s a challenge, it’s something he’s good at even though he hates it, and so within the day he finds himself made leader of the rebel army. He avoids using weapons, avoids deploying troops, and prefers to deal with the other leaders diplomatically to try and reach a solution, but it’s not always so simple; sometimes decisions have to be made for the better of the whole rather than the individual — and he hates that, he does, because he’s always been a champion of the individual, he’s always felt every person matters — and sometimes he authorizes the use of weapons he thought would only exist in his nightmares, and sometimes he makes adjustments he shouldn’t and sometimes he sends those who are hardly more than children out to die, and sometimes he doesn’t care. 

He’s there nearly two months when he notices a bit of a shift. The rebel leaders who were originally at his side speak to him less — they tell him what the problem is and let him offer a solution. They never call him Doctor anymore. They neither smile nor laugh, and partly it’s because he doesn’t bother to try and keep spirits up anymore, since he can hardly buoy his own. His bones and heart feel heavy and his skin feels blistered and raw from the sand and sun and heat, and his voice feels low and slow to him every time he speaks, and his hearts pound in his ears, louder than drums. He hears the soldiers murmuring every time he passes, and one time he reaches out to place a comforting hand on a young girl’s shoulder, and watches her cringe away.

Whispers of savior and Doctor and hero sour into warrior and destroyer and mastermind and they all curdle in his ears. River had predicted this, after all, hadn’t she? War was his game, always had been, even when it was in disguise, even though he pretended he always fought for the right side. Here, on this broken planet, he gets to play with great, complicated things and concepts, with people and weapons and it’s all terribly vulgar and yet it soothes him and holds him still, though not steady — it’s something to focus on and something to think about, and when there’s so much smoke all around him he doesn’t even have to pretend to see clearly.

It’s going on three months when something finally happens.

He’s standing in the front of the rebels’ leaders and generals, sitting in a chair that has come to look suspiciously like a throne, but ugly, wrought in iron and black and harsh lines, when the doors fly open. He’s on his feet instantly, hands clenched into fists at his sides, jaw tight, and the other leaders are on their feet too, some moving as though they’d stop the intruder, but she reaches into the depths of her cloak and holds out a blaster leveled at the Doctor, so everyone freezes.

It’s not until she’s standing at the foot of the pedestal onto which his chair is placed that she throws back her hood and all of that hair springs out, and he thinks his hearts stop.

“Hello, sweetie,” she says, and he simply gapes at her. “Kindly ask your friends to leave, hm? I’ve got to have a word, and I’d hate to have to shoot someone to make a point.”

“You?” he says, finally, his voice little more than a whisper, and he sees her expression soften slightly at the sound, though she still looks a shade past furious. “Hate to shoot?”

“More than you do of late, anyway,” she responds, and he blinks, waving his hands to shoo everybody from the room.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor says, “I know her. She won’t hurt anybody.”

“Would that I could say the same thing for you.”

“How did you get in here, anyway?” the Doctor asks as the last of his people file out. He ignores her jibe. “There are armed guards at every entrance.”

“When has that ever stopped me?”

“It’s miles underground!”

“I took the lift.”

“You need passcodes.”

“What, numbers? Please.”

He feels himself smile a bit, and he’s so unused to the expression of late that he wonders if his face won’t crack. “What are you doing here, River?”

“Diplomacy,” she says, as though it’s obvious, and when he just furrows his brow she gives a long-suffering sigh and explains. “I’ve been working on the other side, you complete idiot. Didn’t you wonder who was over there, outsmarting you?”

He realizes, then, that he didn’t. Of course he’d never been involved in any one war so long — it usually takes him not a matter of weeks to end even the most violent of wars, simply because he can outmaneuver almost anyone in the universe. If he’d stopped for one moment to care, he may have even realized that no one but River could be on the other side, but the endgame, for once, was not his goal.

“Of course you didn’t,” she says, “I knew the moment I saw you seated on this dreadful thing that you were in a bad way. Traveling alone, then?”

The Doctor steps quickly down from the platform and his chair, stopping to stand before her. His hands ache to reach for her, but something in her posture and expression tells him that she wouldn’t let him. She’s angry, but unlike him, she reins it in well. “I’ve been knocking around alone a bit, yeah. I’m nearly two thousand years old, River. I’ve been alone once or twice in my lifetime.”

“Yes, and it never goes well. You need babysitting or you’re bound to break your toys,” she says, “and your toys tend to be people and planets, Doctor, so excuse me if I’m not well pleased to find my husband grinding a civilization into smithereens bit by bit.”

He looks down. “That’s not fair.”

“Things seldom are, are they? Now, if you can come sit down at this table with me like a normal person instead of some sort of idiot god we can have a chat and resolve this whole mess.”

“That easy?”

“Do you even know what you’re fighting for?”

“They want freedom,” the Doctor says, following River to the table and sitting down. She chooses to sit across from rather than beside him, and noticing burns in his gut, because it’s been so long since he’s seen her, and she’s long dead for him, a ghost who dances the line between his dreams and his nightmares, sing-songs her words in his ears even when he doesn’t want to hear them, and although he looked for her for so long, seeing her hurts. What hurts even worse is the anger and disappointment in her eyes. That she hasn’t yet made a move to so much as touch him. “They want their leader — a leader whom they will elect — who speaks for them to be put into place, instead of the previous President who was thoroughly disconnected with their plight.”

“Their plight,” River snorts, her chin jutting into the air defiantly as she looks away from him. She breathes deeply and then looks back at him, and her eyes blaze. “You didn’t even bother to get the details, did you? You just landed and looked for a fight, and then you made it all worse. This rebel army you’re heading up is made up of the wealthiest echelons of this society, who were pissed when a working class President was elected. The previous President was trying to even out taxes, give freedoms to minorities, to level out the thoroughly unbalanced wealth — hardly a despot, Doctor.”

“That’s not what —”

“No, of course not, but you didn’t do any research.”

“I —”

“Went looking for a fight. Well, you found one, sweetie. I hope you’re happy. Shall I tell you the death toll on my side? Farmers, most of them. Shopkeepers, secretaries, children. I can tell you the name of every person I’ve had a hand in sending to their death. Can you say the same?”

He looks away from her. “No.”

Suddenly, he feels the sharp pain of her slap, his skin throbbing where her hand contacted. When he looks up, mouth hanging upon, she’s leaning over the table with fury written into every line of her beautiful, wonderful, familiar face.

“Do you even listen when I speak? I don’t tell you not to travel alone for my health, you stupid man.” She reaches out as though she’d slap him again, but he catches her wrist — and the symmetry bites at him, galls him, guts him — and stands as well so his face is so close to hers that he could kiss her if he didn’t think she’d bite him.

“I always listen to you,” he says.

She eyes him carefully, still angry, and he simply stays still through her scrutiny until she seems to find what she’s looking for and sits back down. He reluctantly releases her hand, his fingers trailing against the soft inside skin of her wrist.

“Total surrender on your side. You’ve got a month to ease them into the idea, at which point we will begin reconstruction of the capital and send missions to get food and medication to areas that have been neglected. Our President will resume his rule with a small council from your side to placate them. And you will leave, and never, ever come back here.”

“It won’t be easy,” the Doctor says, leaning back in his chair and running a hand over his forehead. The callouses on his fingers pull against his skin.

“Of course not,” River said, “but it will be done.”

He nods immediately, looking at her from beneath his hand. “As you say.”

They sit in silence for moments after, but he can’t take his eyes off of her. He imagines she must be far along in her timeline, because there’s a peace to her expression — even though she’s angry — that she lacks when she’s closer to being Melody than River. Her clothes are old and worn, even though she has the vortex manipulator strapped to her wrist, so he imagines she’s been here linearly nearly as long as he has. Her hair is wild as ever, perhaps a bit larger for the heat, and he thinks she looks a bit thin. Still, she’s River, she’s his wife, and to see her before him, solid and real and everything is terribly overwhelming. He at once feels as though he’s just seen her yesterday and as though he hasn’t seen her in a millenia. 

“Is there anything else, then?” she asks, moving to stand. He mimics her movement automatically.

“Anything — River,” he says, stumbling a bit toward her and reaching out at last to place his hands on either side of her face. He doesn’t feel his expression breaking, but he knows it must be because he can see hers softening as he looks at her, stroking his thumbs against her cheeks. “I haven’t seen you in — can you just, couldn’t we — I’m not...”

He finds that he doesn’t have the words, and that suddenly the past few months are bearing down on him; on his own, his moral compass is lacking a north, and depending on the situation he knows he can either be the best balm or the worst explosive. His love for humans stems in large part from his total awe over how consummately good they are, even when they’re bad — ephemeral and a bit slow and a bit wrapped up in themselves, to be sure, but humans can always be counted upon to carry twice their load with a smile, can always be depended upon to make the right decision at any expense. And he simply can’t. He needs someone with him to remind him which way is up and which way is down, because traveling throughout time and space and living his life out of order and out of time does a lot to stave off the boredom, but not much to ground him in things like reason and goodness. 

The Doctor tries to step closer to her still, but stumbles again, and this time he lets himself fall, sliding to his knees, grasping his hands in her shirt and burying his face against her stomach. Her hands immediately fall to brush through his hair, and he feels her long, faltering intake of breath.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, and he hears himself sob as though from far away. She slips to the ground before him, pressing a kiss to his forehead and drawing her arms around him, pulling him close to her. She kisses the top of his head as he buries his face in her neck and cries — for the mistakes he’s made, for missing her, for the past three months he’s spent forgetting what it was like to care. “I’m furious with you, my love, I am. And this isn’t something I can forgive you for — you’ll need to get your benediction from the people here. But I do love you. Always. Completely.”

River continues to stroke his hair and pet his face, her hands running down his back, pressing her lips to his neck and head and shoulders, murmuring soft words of comfort. 

“You’re lost, Doctor. That’s all. But I will always find you, and I will always bring you back — you spend so much time in space, you grow accustomed to the dark. I think you forget what it’s like to be in the light.”

After what seems like hours he stops, but he doesn’t pull away from her. He sits up, still holding her close, and leans back so that he’s sitting on the floor and pulls her onto his lap, wrapping his arms about her and holding her face close to his so he can study the familiar lines of her face. She looks worried, but no longer angry, and he reaches a hand up to stroke the side of her face.

“How long has it been for you?” she asks, and he takes a shaky breath.

“I lost count.”

River frowns. “No, you didn’t.”

“One hundred and thirty-five years, twenty hours, twenty-nine minutes, and five point two seconds,” he says. He knows he shouldn’t — knows it’s spoilers — and so he immediately follows his words with a shrug, adding, “give or take.”

He watches her face go through a range of expressions — first is shock that it’s been so long, then comes amusement at his feint of insecurity, then curiosity at why it’s been so long, and lastly he watches her carefully hide it away, because she knows she can’t ask.

“Let’s take this one step at a time,” she says with a sigh, standing up and reaching down to take his hand as he stands. “Halt any orders you’ve put in motion to stop any more senseless damage. Tomorrow we’ll start negotiations.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. It’s been quite a while for me, too, sweetie. I’d like a chance to catch up with my husband, even if I’m barely resisting the urge to slap him six ways from Sunday.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Melody Pond was a black hole. I could’ve opened my mouth to scream and swallowed the universe whole if you hadn’t been there to make me laugh instead. You saved me. You loved me even when I was undeserving.” She kisses his lips fleetingly, arching her back so that her chest presses to his. “All of this to say, my love, that no matter what you do, I’m here. I’m not your companion — you’re not my hero. You’re my husband, and I will never hesitate to tell you you’ve gone to far. But I will always be there after I slap you to kiss it better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is a bit of a mess. I rewrote it like five times and kept changing my mind before I finally surrendered. Thanks for the kind words on the first chapter — I hope this doesn't disappoint too terribly. Sentimentality gives me heartburn and this required a lot of it.

The Doctor feels painfully self-conscious as he leads River to his lodgings. He realizes that he’s barely been alive since he arrived here, barely been thinking anything at all except for don’t think about River. It hadn’t occurred to him that his quarters were ostentatious and a bit grotesque until he showed River into them. They were luxe for a war-torn planet, the softest, plushest bed linens and duvet resting on the bed he never touched, bottles of expensive this-and-that that he never used on the counter of his bathroom, intricate paintings with rich histories lining the walls, masterly crafted furniture he’d never paid attention to now until he watches River notice everything. He steps off to the side as she looks around, her lip curled slightly in what looks like a snarl, wringing his hands and bowing his head, his hair flopping over his face.

“These don’t suit you at all,” River says, not looking at him as she sheds her cloak and drapes it over the empty drunk at the foot of his enormous bed.

“I didn’t design it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

She sighs. “No. I’m thinking you didn’t even notice that you were making yourself into a king because you were too busy watching everyone else kneel.”

The Doctor has a million quips on the tip of his tongue, a few hundred apologies, and at least a dozen excuses, but all he can do is bow his head even more deeply and stare at the floor. He can’t remember the last time he had so many emotions coursing through his system — after trying not to feel anything for so long, he feels like River’s drawn away a fog, and suddenly everything is more acute. 

Even though she’s standing before him, his grief feels like a tangible thing, a thick, hot liquid coursing through his veins and searing his hearts with every pounding beat. And on top of that, he feels the frustration radiating off of her in waves — she knows what he is, beneath all his elaborate spins and funny hand gestures, beneath the silly jokes and funny outfits and tawdry quirks. She knows how dangerous he can be, because she’s the same way, and she knows how easy it is for him to lose his footing because she’s done it before. It’s why it’s so easy for her to forgive him his worst sleights, and it’s why her forgiveness matters so very much to him. But it’s harder to take her anger this time because he just wants to hold her — worse, he just wants to be held — and because he knows that this might actually, truly be the last time he ever sees her. He feels like his hearts are breaking all over again, splintering down the center and falling into the pit of his stomach so that he feels like his entire being is dissolving, piece by piece, into the ground.

Suddenly she’s before him, placing her warm, rough hands on either side of his face and lifting his head so that he is forced to look at her, and he opens his mouth to speak, but all the comes out is a jagged half-sob. She brushes back his hair and steps onto her tiptoes to kiss his forehead. He feels his hands shake as he reaches out to pull her to him, hugging her tightly and burying his face in her neck, breathing in deeply the faintest hint of the jasmine perfume she favors still lingering on her skin. She wraps her arms around him in return, running one hand up and down his back, soothingly scraping her nails gently against the back of his neck with the other. Her touch, the feel of her body against his, the sensation of her heartbeats drumming against his chest soothes him, and he doesn’t move until he feels as though he’s able to speak again.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, pressing a kiss to her neck.

“Come on, then,” River says, pulling away and twining her fingers with his. “There’s a bathtub big enough for ten in there, and I have dirt in places I didn’t know existed. It will feel good to get clean again, hm?”

Her eyes give the question twice its weight, and he feels his hearts tripping in his chest again, but she must see him sinking in again because she leans forward to press a brief kiss to the corner of his lips, giving his hand a squeeze where it rests in hers before she guides him to his own tub.

The bathroom is three times as large as it needs to be, tiled and grand, and River releases his hand to turn the water on. When she turns back to him, he’s standing there stupidly, staring at her, and she rolls her eyes, huffing a sigh that blows a few tresses of hair from her face. She begins to undress him, and all he can do is look at her. He can see the dirt on her skin, close up, see the dryness of it, but she glows as ever — there’s just something about River that’s so very much, as though the essence of her is so great it can’t be contained by her skin. Her eyes are bright but sad, and in the blandly colored bathroom dressed in blandly colored clothes they’re more grey than green. Her hair is frizzy and wild, but he loves it like this — she looks like a lioness, even in repose. He runs a hand along the side of her face as she bends to slide his trousers and pants down his legs, stepping out of his shoes and socks until he’s completely bared before her.

As she goes to stand again, she places a kiss to each of his knees, his hips bones, his sternum, either side of his chest, between his collar bones, the center of his throat as he swallows and finally to the tip of his nose — he smiles, and feels his burden lighten slightly as she smiles back.

“Go on, sweetie,” she says, shoving him slightly toward the tub. 

He turns the water off and steps in, and it’s so hot it almost burns, but it feels cleansing. Slowly he lowers himself into the water, and feels his whole body sigh when he’s finally submerged. He closes his eyes for a moment, expecting River to join him any minute, but when she doesn’t, he turns to look at her. She’s just standing there, staring at him with an expression of total fondness on her face; it’s the sort of expression he’s been starving for since he said goodbye to her at Trenzalore.

“I know I’m easy on the eyes, but —”

“Oh, don’t be cheeky with me,” River says after a laugh, smirking at him as she reaches for the buttons on her shirt. “You’re a big streak of nothing. I deserve canonization for putting up with those bandy limbs, and don’t even get me started on that face…” She slips it off of her shoulders terribly slowly, biting her lower lip as she lets it drop to the floor and he doesn’t think anyone else in the universe could look so simultaneously vulnerable and in control at the same time. “I deserve canonization for the face alone, frankly, and then there’s your dress sense, well. That goes without saying.” 

She bends over to unzip her boots, stumbling slightly to the side — and he remembers with a jolt the great pleasure it is to see River Song in those brief seconds in which she can’t control everything, those moments when she trips over her own feet or gets tangled in the sheets early in the morning or messes up her eyeliner before an event — and as she steps out of one and tries to right herself, she turns around altogether, stepping out of the other boot. She stands straight up and unhooks her bra, letting it too drop to the floor, and the Doctor licks his lips at the sight of all that beautiful, beautiful skin. She slips her fingers beneath the waistband of her jodhpurs, and bends over to slide them off. He can’t help the groan that escapes him as she slips them off, bending fully over to step completely out of her trousers and revealing her rather characteristic lack of pants.

“River…”

“Shh, don’t interrupt me while I’m talking,” River says, turning back around and finally approaching him in the tub. He wants River then, and it’s not just a physical need, although that’s unignorable — it’s an emotional, even spiritual, desire that grips him most, the realization that he’s barely been alive since he’s last seen her. That the terrible things he’s done in her absence feel like the actions of a different person, some horrible nightmare monster who walks around in his skin when she’s not there to shove him back into it. “As I was saying, I’m a saint for putting up with you. In addition to the… aesthetic thing, which is no small problem, truth be known, there’s that nasty little proclivity you have for going off the rails every now and then.”

The Doctor swallows as River steps into the water, settling herself onto his lap. His hands instinctively settle on her hips, and she shifts a bit, making him go ever-so-slightly cross-eyed. She leans forward to press a kiss to his left cheek.

“Remember after Berlin, after I left the Sisters of the Infinite Schism, you chased me through an entire galaxy? We had dinner, and you said something — I don’t remember what it was, even — that set me off, and then you must’ve spent the better part of a month, even with the old girl, jumping from planet to planet trying to stop me from wreaking havoc. I robbed three dozen banks, minimum. Knocked over every high-end store with passably decent merchandise. I crashed two stock markets. I killed three people who got in my way. And you know, I’ve killed hundreds in my life, Doctor. Hundreds of thousands indirectly. When I was younger I didn’t care, but killing those three people — even thinking about it makes my chest ache. It wasn’t because they were special or because I suddenly became a good person; it was because every time I turned around, there you were. Looking at me with those sad eyes. Fighting me with your words, but only ever touching me with tenderness.”

Her eyelids flutter, and she breathes in and out deeply before leaning in to kiss his right cheek. They’ve been together, from his point of view, longer than he could even count — she knows nearly everything about him, and he knows almost everything about her. They don’t keep many thoughts or feelings to themselves, but he knows it’s still not always easy for her to be honest with him, because it’s not always easy for him to be honest with her. They’ve set their lives out for one another to see over the years, spread their demons and dreams out on bar tops and TARDIS consoles, starscapes and dashboards. He’s split his chest open for her just to point out all the paths to his hearts, but even still it’s not always easy. Her words long past filter through his mind: it’s called marriage, honey.

“Melody Pond was a black hole. I could’ve opened my mouth to scream and swallowed the universe whole if you hadn’t been there to make me laugh instead. You saved me. You loved me even when I was undeserving.” She kisses his lips fleetingly, arching her back so that her chest presses to his. “All of this to say, my love, that no matter what you do, I’m here. I’m not your companion — you’re not my hero. You’re my husband, and I will never hesitate to tell you you’ve gone to far. But I will always be there after I slap you to kiss it better.”

“You’re —” he says, but there’s nothing grand enough. His hearts are beating out of his chest, out of time, and the painful lead-thickness he’d felt in his veins earlier has given way to an incredible lightness, a feeling of expansion deep within him; he thinks he might escape his skin, he’s so in love with her, and so indebted to her, and so he offers the only word he thinks can remotely encapsulate what he’s feeling: “ — everything. You’re just everything.”

She smiles. “I know.”

“Oi,” he says, “we’re having a moment. Now’s not the time for you to be cocky.”

“Me? Cocky?” she says, pausing to kiss him. For the first time she doesn’t pull away, but she still holds back, just a little — she moves her lips gently against his, closed and chaste and he hungers for more, whimpering as she draws his lower lip between her teeth and pulls away before releasing it. She reaches a hand down between them and runs one finger over his hard length beneath the water, and he gulps. “Now who’s the cocky one, hm?”

“Where in the universe did you ever acquire such a knack for awful puns?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, shifting her weight to her knees and lifting herself above him, teasing herself with the head of his cock. He can hardly breathe as he looks up at her reverently. He leans forward to press a kiss to her throat, and when she gasps a bit, he commits more fully, grazing his lips and tongue and teeth against her skin until he knows her neck will be blooming with faint red marks later on. “My mum and dad had a friend, growing up. Some daft old man. I think I spent too much time with him, picked up on his bad habits.”

“Terrible,” he says, his grip bruising on her hips as she lowers herself ever so slightly onto his length, only to lift herself up again and leave him gasping with frustration. She leans toward him, her mouth grazing his as he speaks. “Did you learn anything else from him?”

“One or two things,” she says. “Not appropriate conversation, though.”

“No?”

“No. I’d better just show you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, sliding down onto him and moaning into his mouth so that every hair on his body stands on end, “if you’ll shut up long enough for a demonstration.”

“Of course,” he says, “yes, River. River.”

“I said shut up, sweetie.”

“Yes, fine, I’m —” he cuts himself off when she presses her lips to his, and this time she holds nothing back. Her mouth is hot and wide, and her tongue sweeps possessively through his mouth, running over the roof of his mouth in that way she knows drives him wild. His hands slide up from her hips, glancing over her rips, rolling over her breasts and then into her hair as he clutches her desperately to him. She rides him hard and fast — there’s no buildup. All the tenderness is in her words, and they’re opposites that way; while he’ll wage war with his words but seldom lift a hand to hurt anybody, she’ll level a gun at anyone who looks at her wrong, but make even the coldest heart fall in love when she’s inspired to kind words.  
He grips her hair in fistfulls, gasping and panting into her mouth. His lips moving from her mouth to her neck down to her clavicle, and further still; she drapes her arms over her shoulders as she continues to fuck him, lifting her torso slightly with the motion so that he can find her breasts with his mouth. The water sloshes violently around them, and dimly he registers that it’s gotten somewhat cold and is splattering all over the floor, but he can’t bring himself to care. He mouths at her breasts, running his tongue over the smooth skin and over her nipple, grazing his teeth over the firm bud and then drawing it into his mouth to suck on it. She lets out a keening moan above him, and he throws his head back, feeling everything in his body drawing tight.

He wraps his hands around her to dig into her ass, helping aid her movements as her cries become more and more desperate. It’s not enough, though — she feels like heaven around him and just looking at her, face flushed, eyes closed in pleasure, lips wet and parted, is enough to all but make him come, but he hasn’t touched her like this in ages, and he needs more. He wants to feel every inch of her, and they’re limited by the tub. He slips one hand around to the front of her body and presses it between her legs, running his finger over her clit, slippery beneath the water, as she moves, and her cries turn to short, sharp screams. He rubs her more frantically as he feels her begin to clench around him, and she brings her face back to his; she misses his mouth at first, kissing too far to the left and then just below, and finally she kisses him again, desperately, fiercely, all tongue and teeth and it takes everything in him not to come when she does, crying out into his mouth as she clenches around his cock.

Before she can even speak again he’s cradling her to him, awkwardly foisting himself up with her in his arms and out of the tub, careful not to slip. She instinctively wraps her legs around him, and they barely disconnect as he stumbles back toward the bedroom. He drops her onto the bed and crawls up on top of her, pressing every line of his body against hers. She kisses him slowly and sweetly, in the way that she always does after she comes, and even though he thinks he might burst if he doesn’t have her immediately, he just kisses her until he feels her vigor return. He slides a hand down her body, pressing his hands between her thighs, and within a moment she’s reaching her hands around him and digging her fingers into his ass, pulling him toward her.

“Impatient,” he sighs against the side of her mouth, pressing ever-so-slightly into her as she wraps her legs around his waist.

“I want to see you come,” she says, her voice deep and raspy, and he shudders.

He watches her eyes grow wide and soft, watches her pupil expand even more as he pushes back into her, watches the shape of her mouth shift as he pulls out again and circles his pelvis against her on his next thrust; he kisses her nose and her eyelids as they flutter and her lips, he kisses her jaw and her throat and the juncture of her neck and shoulder. 

When he pulls out next, he shifts back on the bed until he slips off and stands, then reaches for her to pull her down as well until she’s laying with her legs on the ground. He settles between her legs, watching her reddened face as she watches him, watches her chest heave as she pants, and folds her legs around his waist; he presses into her once again, and she throws her head back and lets out a long moan, feeling him more deeply than before. His hands are greedy for her, since his mouth can’t reach, and her eyes never leave his — he pushes into her harder and harder, feeling himself winding up, higher and higher, and when she reaches down to rub her own clit and her cries reach fever pitch, he knows he’s not going to last long — when she comes this time, she shouts his Gallifreyan name, and he follows her, chanting her name into her skin as he folds over her. 

Slowly, the both slide up on the bed, and she cuddles into his side in a way that fills him with warmth from head to toe. It’s not particularly comfortable — they were both wet from the bath still, and the duvet was somewhat saturated with cold water — but the Doctor thinks no one could pay him enough to move as River sidles even closer and places a kiss to his shoulder. She wraps an arm around his waist, and he slides his beneath her, cradling her to him.

He’s traveled through so much of time and space. He’s seen galaxies born and stars go supernova. He’s seen civilizations born and ended, and even caused the demise of more than a few. He’s had humans and Time Lords and all manner of beings move in and out of his life, running their hands over his heart, for more than one thousand years. Despite all of this, nothing has ever been more treasured by him than River, no feeling more dear than that which he gets when, post-coital, she curls herself around him.

“I’ve done horrible things in my lifetime,” he says, “more than I could possibly count. I do good things, too, every once in a while. The good can’t possibly outweigh the bad, not that anyone’s measuring, although if they were I’d still come up short only I’d have numbers to put to it…”

River sighs through her nose, and he knows it’s not that she doesn’t want to listen, it’s the self-pity she won’t tolerate. He squeezes her to him and continues.

“The point is, there’s running and there’s running.”

“Doctor,” she says, rolling over so that she’s lying fully on top of him. She’s heavier than she looks, built out of a frightening amount of muscle, but even still her weight is pleasant, grounding. She folds her hands beneath her chin so that she can look at him as she speaks. “That’s not a point, that’s an abstraction.”

“No, it’s a point. Well, part of a point. Half a point.”  
“And the rest?”

“Sometimes I’m running to things — trying to catch a glimpse of every corner of the universe before it flickers and disappears. That’s when things go well. Those are the days that I am the Doctor, the days I live up to my promise. The days I can look my companions in the eye and laugh. The days I can do anything. Ah, those days, River. If I could build a lifetime from them, the world would smile to see me.”

River maintains eye contact, moving her hands to place a light kiss to his chest, encouraging him to continue before resuming her prior position.

“But things happen, in that way things do.”

“Hate it when they do that, things.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I start running away, and that’s when I get myself into trouble. I never take enough time to look back, and see what I’ve stepped on. It’s my biggest problem, you know.”

“Second only to your sense of style,” River says.

“Oi, you,” he says, reaching up to pinch her sides, “always ruining moments.”

“If you wouldn’t witter on, I wouldn’t have to,” she says.

“Oi!” he says. “For your information, Professor, I’m considered quite wise by millions.”

“Or so they tell you to your face.”

“I thought you were here to help me,” he says.

She grows serious then, kissing his chest once more before rolling away. He watches her as she steps from the bed, disappearing into the bathroom and reappearing a second later with a towel, which she uses to properly dry herself.

“I am, of course,” she says. “Always. But I’m also here for the people on this planet, my love. Tonight is about you — tomorrow the real work begins. I can forgive you because you’ve earned my forgiveness and my trust one million times over; you’ve got to earn the forgiveness of the people here.”

“I know,” the Doctor says. “River, I know.”

She nods, handing him the towel as he stands so that he can dry off, too. She strips the duvet from the bed as he does, pleased to find that the water hasn’t totally seeped through. She settles onto the bed, and when he’s clean and dry he lays down beside her, resting his head on her stomach. River runs her fingers through his hair, and he closes his eyes at the sensation of her nails scraping gently against his scalp. Moments pass in silence like that until River speaks.

“You’re uncharacteristically quiet, my love, not to mention quite still. It’s making me nervous.”

“I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“I love you,” he says. He feels her sharp intake of breath, but continues anyway. “Of course, you know — I hope you know — but I need to say it. I didn’t say it enough before — before — before, well, you know. Just before, is what I mean. I just… I just bloody love you, River.”

He can’t picture her expression — he can’t even think of the last time he told her that he loved her, and it galls him that he’s not sure he ever has, at least not overtly. He always thought, before Trenzalore, that she just knew. She knew him so well, he thought she’d be able to read it in his eyes and in the smile he saved just for her, thought she’d see it in his actions, in the way that he dressed up for their dates and preened for her every time she set her eyes on him, but when she’d questioned if he’d ever loved her that night, he’d felt a secondary grief, one that he didn’t think he’d ever recover from. To realize that she’d spent lifetimes wondering whether or not he truly loved her hurt almost worse than her loss. He wishes she could live in his head for one minute, because surely then she would know. Surely she would know then that his entire universe had long since come to revolve around her.

“I know,” she says. He feels her shift, and dimly hears her heartbeats jump, as though she’s nervous. Her fingers stall against his skin. “You told me on Trenzalore. It’s lovely to hear, though, sweetie. I did assume we’d done Trenzalore, last you saw me, but I didn’t want to give away spoilers until I was sure.”

“What?”

“Spoil —”

“I’m sorry, what?” he exclaims, scrambling off of her and off the bed onto his feet and staring at her open-mouthed. “You’ve done Trenzalore?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Trenzalore. You’ve done — how could you have bloody done Trenzalore, River, you were dead on Trenzalore, already in the Library and —”

“Ah, well now, answering that would actually be spoilers, honey, but suffice to say that is not the last chapter in our little blue books.”

“You’re alive?!”

“Last I checked,” she said, grinning. He began to pace, yanking on his hair, his hands fidgeting around a bowtie he wasn’t wearing. “Although if I’m not, it has some rather unkind implications for you, given our earlier behavior.”

“How did you — no, I won’t ask that. Can’t ask that. But River — River, you’re really actually here. You you. Now you. There’s still more to come!”

“Sweetie, of course there is,” River says, standing and going to him. She wraps her arms around his neck to stop him pacing, and he lets out a whoop of glee, squeezing her around the waist as he lifts her off the ground to spin her in a circle, and she laughs. “We’ve well established that you’re rubbish on your own, haven’t we? A wife’s duty is never done.”

He kisses her, long and hard, grinning the whole time, and when he pulls back he places both hands on either side of her face and just looks at her as she rolls her eyes at him. God, he’s missed her, and this isn’t it — this isn’t the end. She’ll stay and help him clean up his mess, and he’ll fix this war, and help rebuild, and then they’ll fly off together and his great big lightning-fast mind can’t do anything but repeat the simple fact that she’s alive, over and over and over again.

“Never, River,” he says. “Do you hear me? Never done.”

“My, someone’s clingy.”

“Yes, very,” he says. “Clingy and needy and co-dependent and I swear that if you ever die again or even pretend to die or get close to dying or get close to having a near-death experience I will kill you myself. Okay?”

“Okay,” River says. “Now, husband?”

“Wife?”

“We’ve got months of linear, hard work coming up.”

“I know,” he says, “I’m glad. I owe it to these people. More than I could ever repay.”

“Nevertheless,” River says, pulling him closer, “we’ve got twelve hours until daylight and a bed the size of a yacht.”

“You’re not tired, are you?”

“That’s not what I was implying.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

The Doctor carried River to bed once more, and this time there was no anchor weighing him down — tomorrow, he knew, would be difficult. Tomorrow he would have to make peace with the people he’d wronged, and acknowledge his body count, and apologize more deeply than he’d had to in a long time. Tomorrow would be difficult and draining, and so would the next day, and the next — but the hopelessness that had pervaded his sense of being for the past months evaporated as quickly as River arrived, and even if the next few months were the most difficult of his life, he was looking forward to them with River at his side.


End file.
